What’s Next For The NXT Championship?

Wrestling fans were hit with a shocking bit of news on Wednesday: Tommaso Ciampa, the current NXT Champion and one of the best heels on the planet, is going to be out indefinitely with a neck injury that will require him to undergo surgery.

I’m a big Tommy Sports Entertainment fan, so this news sucks for me, as well as it does for thousands upon thousands of Big Daddy Ciampa fans. But sadly, the news is out there, there’s nothing we could do to fix the situation, we’ve got to look to the future.

But what exactly does the future hold?

This is surely an unprecedented situation for the yellow brand. Here we are just a month out from NXT Takeover: New York, the Takeover before WrestleMania. It’s one of the biggest shows NXT will put on all year, and suddenly we find ourselves without an NXT champion heading into the show.

Not only that, but this remarkable story they’ve been telling with Ciampa and Johnny Gargano, a story that dates back almost TWO YEARS, has come grinding to a halt. Every expectation out there was that it would be Gargano-Ciampa IV for the NXT Championship at Takeover, but clearly the WWE is going to have to go back to the drawing board on this one.

Now, there are a couple of different ways they could take the title here. Do they just hand it to someone? Do they have a match for it on NXT TV? Do they wait until Takeover to crown a new champ?

Allow me to make a suggestion: Six-Man NXT Championship Ladder Match.

IT was this time last year when the NXT North American Championship, currently held by the Velveteen Dream, was ushered into existence as a secondary title for talent to compete for on Wednesday nights. Just how did we get our first NXT North American Champion? In an absolutely off-the-charts amazing six-man ladder match between Dream, Killian Dain, Lars Sullivan, Ricochet, EC3 and the eventual winner, Adam Cole.

That match was heralded as one of the very best NXT matches of all time, and received a fabled (if you put stock into this sort of thing) five-star rating from Dave Meltzer. We’re right on the anniversary of that match, so why not bring the ladders back out and let NXT’s finest go to war for the NXT Championship?

It’s a smart way to inspire a new tradition, a way to honor the past while looking to the future, and above all, it’s an easy way to guarantee an insane match that will send the fans home happy.

So who should be in this match? Here’s who I propose: Johnny Gargano, Adam Cole, Velveteen Dream, Matt Riddle, Keith Lee, and Dominik Dijakovic. That way, you have your two hosses that could also achieve high-flying feats that just don’t seem possible, while also mixing in undeniable star-talent. With this group of six, I don’t think there’s a wrong way to book the future of the NXT Championship.

All six of these guys are deserving at a shot at NXT’s top title, with Lee and Dijakovic working their way into the picture after a simply sensational match on last week’s NXT TV. The other four competitors are proven commodities like Cole, Dream and Gargano, and Matt Riddle being the ultimate wildcard that has a very reasonable chance to win the match despite being the newest to the brand.

In fact, that’s probably how I would book the match if I were given that sort of power. We just had a long heel championship reign, a marvelous one at that from Ciampa, but I’d like to see a change of pace here, so I’d say no to Cole and Dijakovic. Lee’s not ready yet I don’t think, Johnny should focus on the main roster, Dream’s already wearing championship gold…which leaves us with Matt Riddle.

What better way to establish the King of Bros as a megastar by having him step up and knock off this who’s-who field of wrestling greats? The man is going to be NXT champ sooner or later, and probably sooner, so what’s the harm in pulling that trigger in New York?